There have been some really strange articles on the Internet lately. One which caught my eye was an article which claims Michelle Obama is really a man. The Internet is great, you can find almost anything on it, but it does have a drawback and that drawback is anyone can say anything on it without regard to whether it is factual or not. When you have much of the world’s population reading articles on the Internet there will always be those who will believe what they read, no matter how outrageous it is. If I think something stated might be true, I try and cross reference it with several trusted sources before considering to cite it. If Michelle Obama was a man that would mean their children would have been adopted and there probably would be records of her when she was a male and I am sure all this would have come out during his election campaign.

A woman wanted to be the star of a reality show and told the world she had three breasts. She went so far as to even have pictures of herself which clearly showed a third breast under her clothing. She received some notoriety because of this and many people marveled at this very unusual sight. The woman stated she wasn’t born with a third breast, but had gotten it “installed” by a plastic surgeon so she would stand out on a television show. ­­Well she did stand out before admitting the breast was a prosthesis. She used her new found fame to pursue a career in music.

Sometimes there are technological claims made on the Internet. One has to be very careful about these, because trying some of them could cause harm to one of the devices you are applying these so called fixes to. Let me give you an example of one. I don’t think it would harm anything, but it is said to be useless and yet a lot of people fell for it. One web site touted some scientific principle which they said allows an onion and some Gatorade to be used to recharge an IPad. Supposedly the two combined generate an electrical current. After this made the rounds and a lot of people bought into it, it was revealed to be a hoax. Proving once again no matter how truthful something seems, one should be careful before trying it.

One of the most enduring types of outrageous articles has to do with using photographs. People are more apt to believe something if they see it, at least some people are. Today that has become a very dangerous practice, because of digital photography and the ease at which photos can be altered with software packages such as Photoshop, Xara and others. There have been all sorts of photos popping up on the Internet with articles about the photos. The problem is many of the photos are not real. Lately a lot of photos of giant human skeletons have been appearing on many different sites. They usually show one or several men supposedly digging out a site and an exposed human skeleton which is about 20 feet in height or bigger. Some are done very well and the photos have to be examined closely to find the manipulation, while others are crude and the cut and paste is obvious to us who are familiar with this type of thing. The same techniques are applied to some of the UFO photos and articles which appear. Sometimes they are made to look like very obvious fakes, because they are being put up as UFO disinformation and the powers that be want us to think all UFOs are hoaxes.

One area where misinformation can truly be dangerous is on so called medical sites. There are also health tips all over the Internet and one has to wonder how many people have taken some of these tips as gospel and actually hurt their health by trying this stuff. One that comes to mind which seems to be in a lot of different places is telling us not to take high blood pressure medicine, because there are other ways to control blood pressure and they cite certain vegetables or supplements. If someone has high blood pressure and goes off the medicine it can result in something very tragic happening to them. They should talk to their doctor before jumping headlong into some alternate form of treatment. I am not saying there is nothing out there which might work, but I am saying there doesn’t seem to be anything I know about regardless of the claims I have seen. Some articles talk about replacing the medicine with herbal therapies. Others talk about eating large amounts of certain types of food. One can probably find hundreds of suggestions on what to eat and what to do, but remember the Internet is really not the place to get medical advice from even when the site throws doctor’s names around.

Recently a story appeared on the Internet which stated a man was about to be mauled by a bear, but he got saved. It went on to say his cell phone’s Justin Bieber’s ringtone went off and scared the bear away. One has to wonder why anyone would even put up a story like this which is not true. The story came from an Austrian newspaper which had a reputation for false stories. A similar one was printed in a newspaper and said a baby gorilla went missing in Africa and the rest of the gorillas went to the nearest village and checked out all the huts for the baby. This was also nonsense. The very next day the newspaper had to print a retraction, because the story was obviously false.

I have mentioned some of the stuff on the Internet which is bogus, but there are some really outrageous articles and comments on the Internet which are true and maybe that is why some people believe so much of this stuff. Let me give you a few hints about some of this stuff. One story talks about a flasher in a cemetery at night who flashes anyone who comes in, which is almost nobody. Another article is about a six year old child who called 911 on his father because he ran a red light. I wouldn’t want this kid in my car, it’s like having big brother with you. A theft took place in a jewelry store and when the video was examined it turned out to be a monkey. Somehow he had gotten into the store and liked the pretty stones. So you see there are some incredible stories on the net which are true.